The Sword That Cuts Across Dimensions
When Jet-Black and Divinity fused, a third magical power was born — one that had never existed in the world before.
Void.
"Impossible……!"
Silaje felt a throbbing ache bloom behind his eyes from the mere act of looking at it.
The fusion of Jet-Black and Divinity — polar opposites that negated each other absolutely! He would sooner believe that a demon and an angel could couple and produce offspring.
It felt as though centuries of research and lifetimes spent chasing the truth were being denied wholesale, collapsing into nothing before a power that should never have existed at all.
His mind, the mind of a necromancer, strained endlessly to analyze it — but the harder he tried, the more an excruciating headache and a hollow futility devoured his thoughts.
A blade. He needed a blade.
If he'd been holding a knife at that moment, he would have driven it through his own skull without hesitation.
His forehead throbbed, his organs twisted in on themselves, and drool ran in a thin line from the corner of his mouth. Simply watching was enough to drive a man insane.
"Impossible!!"
He had to get that thing out of his sight, now.
At Silaje's will, the enhanced Blood Zombies surged forward like arrows loosed from a bowstring.
[Boy!]
"I'm fine, Pier."
Simon calmly held Pier back, then pressed the sphere of Void close against his own chest.
Ssssssssss—
The Void spread over him, reshaping itself into clothing.
A cloak of black-blue light, as though it reflected the cosmos itself, wrapped softly around Simon's body, its hem rippling in the night air.
Simon had, at this moment, clothed himself in the abyss.
—Uwooooooooh!
The Blood Zombies lunged, jaws wide, to tear at Simon's throat—
Shhhhrrak—
They weren't even allowed to draw near. Each one crumbled into black ash and scattered on the wind.
Shrak!
Shshshshrak!
In moments, all twenty zombies that had surrounded Simon dissolved into drifting ash.
Nothing remained around him but silence, as if nothing had ever been there at all.
"What in the hell IS that thing?!"
Silaje slammed his palms together with a resounding crack! and thrust them forward. Countless droplets of blood flew out, spawning blood explosions large and small in rapid succession.
Thud. Thud.
And through that crimson inferno, Simon — clothed in the Void — walked toward him with a blank expression. Not so much as a speck of dust had touched him.
This was a power beyond the laws of the world. A force outside every recognized scale.
"!"
Silaje's head dropped. His feet were sliding, dragging him across the ground toward Simon.
That wasn't all. Blood droplets, chunks of rock wall, shattered debris, hewn corpses — everything was being sucked in toward him.
'Gravity?'
The empty Void hungered, pulling everything around it inward. But nothing it devoured ever reached Simon — it all crumbled to ash and scattered.
The world itself was being deleted by Simon's hand.
"This is a problem."
Silaje murmured, then touched a finger to the Void robe he wore. The gravity shifted, marking its target — the wind, sand, light, and pebbles around him were excluded from the pull.
Silaje, however, was the exception. He gritted his teeth and forced Jet-Black into both his legs to hold his ground.
"Grrrraaaaahh!!"
Bloodshot eyes blazing, he raised both arms.
The fruits of centuries of labor were about to shine — right here, right now.
The plan to resurrect the Apostle had been flawless.
No one — not even Nephthys, had she been at Kizen rather than on the Holy Federation's border — could have stopped it.
And yet!
'By some snot-nosed BRAT!'
Kugugugugugu!
Silaje flexed his fingers and activated his signature specialty — Blood Stone magic. Behind him, crimson gems piled themselves into a towering structure.
⟨ Longinus ⟩
TKWAAAACK!
The structure shattered, and a spear of refined blood shot forth.
The very same dark magic that had sealed the Dungeon Lord outside with a single blow. And yet—
Shrrk!
Even Longinus was swallowed into the Void, vanishing as if absorbed whole.
"……!"
In the same instant, Silaje felt something immense pass through his body.
Gritting against the grinding pain, he wrenched his stiff neck to the right.
A quarter of his upper torso had been torn away, exposing a raw, vivid red — and behind it, the Longinus he'd fired at Simon moments ago was flying in the opposite direction, hurled back at him.
"Kgh—!"
He staggered and collapsed to his knees.
The Jet-Black holding his legs dissolved, and gravity dragged him sliding toward Simon once more.
Simon kept walking. The distance between them was shrinking with every step.
"What ARE you?!"
Silaje screamed like a cornered animal thrashing at the end of its rope.
"How can a power like that even EXIST!!"
Simon did not answer.
He didn't feel the question deserved one.
'Damn it all!'
A being who had lived for centuries and crossed the line of mortality, Silaje's survival instinct and ambition only grew more obsessive, more desperate.
Blood pouring from him in sheets, he drew a magic circle onto his own body in blood and activated it.
PUWABABABABABAM!
A blood explosion detonated on his own flesh. Simon frowned and stopped in his tracks.
Beyond the blood explosion blanketing an enormous area, Silaje — his body shrunk drastically from the blast — was gasping and scrambling away on all fours.
"I'm not! I haven't lost yet!"
And before him stretched a blood-red portal — the same kind he'd used to summon his believers earlier.
"The Apostle shall rise again!"
Shrieking his defiance, Silaje scrambled on all fours like a pathetic beast and threw himself into the portal. The moment it sealed shut behind him, the believers still battling the undead turned with stricken faces.
"Th-the Archbishop! He fled!"
"Don't tell me he just abandoned us?"
CRACK!
Prince, having just clobbered a believer with his fist, scrunched his face in pure contempt.
[Obviously! I'll never understand how anyone falls for con artists like that!]
Beside him, Erzsébet pressed her palms to her cheeks, her expression one of sheer rapture.
[……How magnificently you fought, my lord!]
Behind her, believers tangled in her webs were strung out like laundry on a line.
KWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAK—!
Behind the two chatting Ancient Undead, a black-winged undead descended from the sky, kicking up a cloud of dust.
[Akemus!]
He was gripping the throat of the third bishop, Anvante, with brutal force.
"Kghk!"
At some point, the twin tonfas Anvante had so proudly wielded had been smashed to splinters.
[I wrecked his Core. I'm wringing out the interest — make him tell us where exactly this Silaje fled to.]
Prince snorted. 'Hmph!'
[Last place goes to Akemus! Slowest of us all! Take notes, boy — learn from your senior here!]
[If I may, everyone.]
Erzsébet pointed at Simon.
[The Legion Commander is doing something over there?]
Simon had begun gathering the Void he wore like clothing into his right hand.
GOOOOOOOOOOH!
The surrounding air trembled, and the sands of night whipped into a frenzy. The wavelength of a monstrous power shook the entire desert.
[C-Commander?]
Simon's attack had not yet—
'I will find you.'
—ended.
He couldn't let Silaje slip away like this. Simon drove his concentration to its absolute limit and closed his eyes. Darkness swallowed his vision, and the world of shadow, stars, and emptiness — the place where he had once been with that being — unfolded before him.
'I WILL find him!'
Simon was gazing into another dimension, one beyond space and time. His vision spun wildly; the cosmos around him swelled and shrank in endless cycles.
The search did not take long.
Using his own position as the anchor, Simon — overturning dust and debris again and again — finally reached a single presence.
A faint, sinister red dot flickering in the darkness.
Silaje. Without a doubt.
"You thought you could run?"
Simon, eyes still closed, raised both his hands. The Void that had taken the form of clothing reshaped itself once more — into his primary weapon, a greatsword.
Eyes closed.
While still sensing Silaje's existence, exactly as he was now.
'I will cut you down.'
Shahed Kingdom territory.
The Hemocult Darkness Union General Headquarters.
Only an extremely select few knew that the root of all evil lay hidden within the Shahed Kingdom.
To ordinary eyes, it was nothing but barren wasteland too wretched to farm — but in truth, a barrier woven by the Hemocult's secret arts cloaked the entire headquarters.
And this structure, a labyrinth of corridors entangled like the inside of a coffin, was, in its entirety, the Hemocult's research facility. Screams of test subjects and monsters echoed from every corner, as if to bear witness to the horrific atrocities committed here.
And right at this very place—
WOOOOOOOOONG!
A blood-red portal tore open, and from within it a blood-drenched, naked man came tumbling out.
"Kghahk! *Cough!* *Cough!*"
The moment he cleared the portal, he convulsed, retching up chunks of blood again and again.
"Someone has breached us!"
The fact that a portal had opened inside the headquarters was known within seconds. Researchers of the Blood Sky Cult in white gowns came swarming.
"Wh-what in the world is that hobo?"
"Archbishop Silaje!"
Murmur murmur murmur!
The researchers' faces went pale with shock. It was impossible to believe this wretched, pitiful wreck was the man who had spent centuries laying the foundation of the Blood Sky Cult.
Just then, a senior researcher darted forward to his side.
"Why have you returned, my lord? The Blood Portal was not to be opened until the Apostle's resurrection—"
"Where is the Elder! WHERE is the Elder!"
Silaje roared, as if that were the only thing that mattered.
"Er, pardon? The Elder left for the main branch well over two years ago—"
"Damn it all!!"
Silaje dragged himself upright, blood dripping steadily from his mouth.
"We must prepare countermeasures this instant!"
"I'm sorry?"
"I saw it with my own two eyes! Jet-Black and Divinity! JET-BLACK AND DIVINITY!"
The researchers' expressions twisted in confusion at the Archbishop's near-mad shrieking.
"Wh-what about them, exactly—"
GAB!
Silaje seized the senior researcher by both shoulders and thrust his face in close.
"They FUSED!!"
Spray from his words flecked the man's face with blood. The researcher recoiled, flailing in horror.
"Ugh! Wh-why are you—!"
"They fused, I tell you! Jet-Black and Divinity, INTO ONE!!"
"L-let go of me, please!"
SLAM!
Silaje knocked the researcher flat and ran.
He kept running.
What had happened in that desert was almost impossible to believe — but it was real. And it had all been turned against the Blood Sky Cult. Countermeasures had to be drawn up, and quickly.
BANG!
The instant Silaje burst through the doors of the headquarters laboratory, his face froze solid.
"Archbishop!"
The other researchers stumbled out after him, out of breath.
"Ah—!"
"The sky…!"
Crrrrack……
Crack……
The sky was splitting open. A black-blue radiance coiled around the entire space.
Silaje's face went rigid with terror. The laboratory's materials and components were floating up into the air, pulled by gravity.
That black-blue power — there was no mistaking it—
At the thunderclap of a voice that seemed to nail itself into his skull, Silaje floundered and pitched face-first to the floor.
"Ah. Aaahhh. AAAAAHHH!"
"Archbishop!"
The researchers rushed to his side in a panic.
"Hide me! Hide me, I say!"
In the very moment Silaje thrashed in desperation—
The same instant.
The same span of time.
SHRRRRK!
Back in the World of Sand, Simon had forged the 'Void' into a greatsword and was drawing it low behind him.
'It doesn't matter where he is. Wherever he runs, it changes nothing.'
The air quivered, and the sands of night swirled into a maelstrom. The wavelength of a colossal power made the entire dimension tremble.
Still sensing Silaje's location, Simon took his stance for the slash — greatsword of Void drawn back.
Space itself warped around him.
[Cutting through—]
His hips turned. His arms followed. Feeling the heavy bite of the blade arcing with centrifugal force, he poured out everything — all his strength, all his will.
[—THE DIMENSION ITSELF!!]
SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The greatsword of the Void swept across, carving a long scar like a galaxy into the empty air.
And that sword strike, with perfect precision—
"!"
Crossed two dimensions.
The continent.
Past the territory of the Shahed Kingdom.
And at long last, through the entirety of the Blood Sky Cult headquarters—
SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
—it carved straight through.
"Ah……!"
Silaje's head flew into the air, his eyes wide with disbelief to the very last.
The final sight those eyes captured was the black-blue sword strike of the Void, splitting the world in two.
THOOOM!
Simon lowered the Void, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and opened his eyes.
'It doesn't matter where you hide. Nowhere is far enough.'
Across the desert sky, an enormous scar across the dimensions had appeared.